Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/43

 PREPARATIONS AND MARCH OF XERXES. 18 towards the latter.^ They were moored by anchors head and §tern, and by veiy long cables. The number of ships placed to ' Herodot. rii, 36. The language in which Herodotus describes the po- sition of these ships which formed the two bridges, seems to me to have been erroneously or imperfectly apprehended by most of the commenta- tors : see the notes of Bahr, Ivruse, Wesseling, Rennell, and especially Larcher : Schweighauser is the most satisfactory. — rov jiev Hovtov eircKap- aiag, Tov 6e 'E/.ATja-ovrov Kara fioov. The explanation given by Tzetzes of k-LKapoiag by the word ~?^a-/iaQ seems to me hardly exact : it means, not oblique, but at right angles with. The course of the Bosphorus and Helle- spont, flowing out of the Euxiue sea, is conceived by the historian as meet- ing that sea at right angles ; and the ships, which were moored near together along the current of the strait, taking the line of each from head to stem, were therefore also at right angles with the Eusine sea. Moreover, Herod- otus does not mean to distinguish the two bridges hereby, and to say that the ships of the one bridge were tov Hovtov e-iKapaiac, and those of the other bridge tov 'E?J.T]aTT6vTov kutH poov, as Bahr and other commentators suppose : both the predicates apply alike to both the bridges, — as indeed it stands to reason that the aiTangement of ships best for one bridge must also have been best for the other. Respecting the meaning of iTrcKapacog in Herodotus, seeiv, 101 ; i, 180. In the Odyssey (is, 70 : compare Eustath. ad loc.) k-JvLKupaiai does not mean oblique, but headlong before the wind : compare hrrlKap, Hiad, xviii, 392. The circumstance stated by Herodotus — that in the bridge higher up the stream, or nearest to the Euxine, there were in all three hundred and sixty vessels, while in the other bridge there were no more than three hundred and fourteen — has perplexed the com- mentators, and induced them to resort to inconvenient explanations, — as that of saying, that in the higher bridge the vessels were moored not in a direct line across, but in a line slanting, so that the extreme vessel on the European side was lower down the stream than the extreme vessel on the Asiatic side. This is one of the false explanations given of eTiiKapaiag (slanting, achrdg) : while the idea of Gronovius and Larcher, that the vessels in the higher bridge presented their broadside to the current, is still more inadmissible. But the difference in the number of ships employed in the one bridge compared with the other seems to admit of an easier explana- tion. We need not suppose, nor does Herodotus say, that the two bridges were quite close together: considering the multitude which had to cross them, it would be convenient that they should be placed at a certain dis- tance from each other. K they were a mile or two apart, we may well sup- pose that the breadth of the strait was not exactly the same in the two places chosen, and that it may have been broader at the point of the upper bridge, — which, moreover, might require to be made more secure, as hav- ing to meet the first force of the current. The greater number of vessels in the upper bridge will thus be accounted for in a simple and satisfactory manner.